Celebrating National Number Day with number toys and games

Yesterday I had to ask Daddy T if he was planning to celebrate today. He’s all about maths and numbers, so I figured he should be making the most of National Number Day.

I know three-year-old Big Girl and I will be celebrating today at least. We’ll probably do some of Big Girl’s favourite number games, which include a lot of hot chocolate, a pile of mini marshmallows and a bowl full of glitter.

I like using number sets at home for baking and playing, and one of the sets we’ve been using recently is the Tactile Numbers and Operations (£9) by Learning Resources UK, which we received at the Toy Fair 2016 last week.

These textured plastic numbers and operations signs have raised arrows on one side, letting young children trace the numbers with their fingers–a way to introduce early numeracy skills and practise number formation.

Sometimes we use numbers in messy play, ideally as part of a glitter bath, where Big Girl gets to do what she loves–pour lots of coloured glitter in a bowl of water and play with the glitter water and the numbers in the water.

Other times we use the numbers as pretend tickets. We pretend they’re tickets that can be used for buying food in her play shop or tickets for real treats.

We use the tickets for making hot chocolate, for example, and pick a number when deciding how many scoops of chocolate we take and how many mini marshmallows we each get. Big Girl has realised 10 is the best one to pick, so I’m usually stuck with 9 when it comes to the mini marshmallows.

Now that we’re doing 11-20 we can still use tactile numbers, and I like that unlike many basic number toys, this set includes 32 numbers to make up larger numbers too, and there are also operations signs, which means they’ll last us for several years to come.

We have two number sets at home, and we use the numbers as often as possible-whenever I feel I can incorporate the numbers into something Big Girl is playing with anyway.

It’s not just Daddy T who likes his numbers. Big Girl and I like them too!

Tags: 3 years, Hot chocolate, Learning numbers, Learning Resources, Marshmallows, Maths, Messy play, National Number Day, Numbers, Preschooler, Toys